
Next Stop: Homes?
Is the Government’s Push for a “Default Yes” for Housebuilding Close to Train Stations a Good Idea?
Planning Opinions
London has again fallen short of its housing targets. The first 9 months of 2025 saw only around 3,000 units of private housing being started, well behind the Mayor’s target of 52,000 new homes per year. The government has already tried to remove regulatory barriers to speed up housing supply, by relaxing Greenbelt restrictions for housebuilding and removing dual-aspect requirement for new-built London homes. Now, here is another one: a “default yes” for housebuilding close to train stations.
In the proposed reforms to the National Planning Policy Framework, the government announced their intention to support housing proposals around train stations, with a “default yes” to planning applications within a reasonable walking distance of well-connected stations.
What’s a “reasonable walking distance” has not been explicitly defined, but Matthew Pennycook, the Minister for Housing and Planning, suggested that 800m could be a possibility. For well-connected stations, they have to be served by 4 trains per hour, or 2 trains per hour in any direction, on weekdays1.
These interventions are framed as ways to encourage building right homes in the right places, and to “get Britain building” by lowering time and financial costs for developers in the lengthy planning application processes.
A dive into the planning applications database revealed that in the past 5 years, only 25% of the major residential applications2 were decided within the statutory time limit of 13 weeks.
Considerable attention should be given to the 800m radius, as 81% of the major residential applications were located within 800m from a train station. Based on historical trends, setting the boundary at 800m means that a significant proportion of major housing schemes can be going through the default approval route in the future, without considering extra stimulation effects brought by the new policy.
Assuming wildly that decision time can be cut by 25% for all those on the default route, this could translate into a rough total per-year saving of 68 years from the time taken to get planning decisions in London. Obviously, this would depend on the complexity of the conditions to be fulfilled by the developer in order to convert a “default yes” into an “actual yes”.

While it seems like there is a considerable potential for speeding up housebuilding brought by the “default yes”, it does not appear like the planning system has been blocking new housing in London, seeing that only 7% of the proposed homes were given red light eventually. Contrary to some analysts’ optimism about the development that can be “unlocked” near stations, an additional tilt towards green-lighting housebuilding near stations itself is unlikely to bring substantially more housing, at least not for London, when the vast majority of housing schemes, especially large-scale ones, have already been supported. Instead, a further tilt in the balance might bring worries about quality.
Another caveat is that the 800m buffer seems to be too blunt. Despite strong national and London-wide planning policy support for building in sustainable locations before the “default yes” came out, approval rate did not show significant differences across the 800m boundary. Does the 800m buffer provide a good estimation of whether the location is sustainable?

To answer the question, we can look at the dataset of Public Transport Accessibility Level (PTAL) from TfL, which considers not only distance to public transport but also service frequency, and includes a range of transport options.
Based on this dataset, we can see that between all neighbourhoods in London, public transport accessibility can still vary significantly even with the same distance to a nearest train station, not to mention that within the 800m buffer, there can be variations in accessibility between locations of different distances to stations. A simple 2-categories cut at 800m does not represent accessibility very well.3

When we break approval rates down by PTAL, a clearer pattern emerges: areas with better public transport accessibility tend to see much higher approval rates, except for PTAL 6a. This approach reveals far more nuance than a simple 800-metre rule, and it takes more transport modes and their frequencies into account. Building this into the “default yes” policy would give a more holistic picture.
The government indeed tried to define “well-connected stations” using a single threshold for train frequency. But 2 trains per hour in any direction does not seem too difficult to meet for most of London’s train stations. When we have a handy PTAL dataset for London, why not use it to set more graduated levels of support for housebuilding based on how accessible an area really is—perhaps through the next London Plan? It may be more complex to administer, but it would better ensure right homes in the right places.
Anyways, to help strengthen the emphasis of developing in sustainable locations, I have classified London neighbourhoods into several clusters to close off this week’s Planning Opinions. Clusters are grouped based on existing neighbourhood density, PTAL levels, and distance to train stations. The green areas on the map below highlights opportunity areas for further densification and development, since they have lower existing density, and good public transport accessibility with train stations very nearby. On the list of green areas, we have New Cross, Peckham, Kennington, Clapham, Mile End, Hampstead, Barking, etc.